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- PROGRAMME
- KM MAP
- EVENTS CALENDAR
Following the same lineage of her previous work in DECOY, Iris Touliatou investigates the ontological dimensions of architecture and identifies its current validity through the remarkable variety of its uses and thus, its relation to a wide spectre of references. The project consists in replicating the lines of sunlight that protrude through the Athens’ Public Tobacco Factory and relocating them into the exhibition space. The factory built in 1927 functioned for seventy years. It is now a relic from an age of intense industrial activity and is used to house the Library of the Hellenic Parliament.
In DECOY replicated light will mold the history, words, and symbols contained in the Tobacco Factory, a landmark of historical significance, into its own respective cast. Employing theatrical mechanisms, sunlight will be staged as spotlights in the exhibition space. The luminous appearance of the artificial sun will work around the shapes of the new structure, creating narrative lines between the two spaces. Elements and artifacts composing the installation will be three-dimensional collages and illusion-sculptures, floating and disappearing as if part of a stage magician’s show.
An associative point of reference is war magician Jasper Maskelyne. In WWII, Maskelyne created large-scale ruses and illusions, by displacing landmarks and creating mock light patterns of entire cities like Alexandria, to serve as decoys for the Germans. This wartime trickery was played in “a theater of operations”; a term coined as military jargon will be appropriated for the space/play/stage, a play on words which juxtaposes and is symptomatic of the current Athenian political scene.
With subtle gestures, DECOY aims to reconstitute architecture and its content, creating accounts of geometric timekeeping, while exploring methods of representation. The mise en scene will reveal backstage mechanics, creating an on-and-off (the) stage, an exchange of subject and object, audience and actors, certainty and illusion.

Iris Touliatou, Cast I, Study for the birth of artificial light, Archival photo, From the Jasper Maskelyne archives, 1942

Iris Touliatou, Cast II, Archival photo, From the archives of Kavala municipal museum, circa 1920.

Iris Touliatou, Cast IV, Study for sun exposure, Research photograph
Iris Touliatou
Curator: Olga Hatzidaki
92 Agisilaou, 1st floor
Olga Hatzidaki
olxa@hotmail.com
T:+30-6959996189
DECOY
Iris Touliatou curated by Olga Hatzidaki
Following the same lineage of her previous work in DECOY, Iris Touliatou investigates the ontological dimensions of architecture and identifies its current validity through the remarkable variety of its uses and thus, its relation to a wide spectre of references. The project consists in replicating the lines of sunlight that protrude through the Athens’ Public Tobacco Factory and relocating them into the exhibition space. The factory built in 1927 functioned for seventy years. It is now a relic from an age of intense industrial activity and is used to house the Library of the Hellenic Parliament.
In DECOY replicated light will mold the history, words, and symbols contained in the Tobacco Factory, a landmark of historical significance, into its own respective cast. Employing theatrical mechanisms, sunlight will be staged as spotlights in the exhibition space. The luminous appearance of the artificial sun will work around the shapes of the new structure, creating narrative lines between the two spaces. Elements and artifacts composing the installation will be three-dimensional collages and illusion-sculptures, floating and disappearing as if part of a stage magician’s show.
An associative point of reference is war magician Jasper Maskelyne. In WWII, Maskelyne created large-scale ruses and illusions, by displacing landmarks and creating mock light patterns of entire cities like Alexandria, to serve as decoys for the Germans. This wartime trickery was played in “a theater of operations”; a term coined as military jargon will be appropriated for the space/play/stage, a play on words which juxtaposes and is symptomatic of the current Athenian political scene.
With subtle gestures, DECOY aims to reconstitute architecture and its content, creating accounts of geometric timekeeping, while exploring methods of representation. The mise en scene will reveal backstage mechanics, creating an on-and-off (the) stage, an exchange of subject and object, audience and actors, certainty and illusion.
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